Here at Lazybones, we're not just about dresses and bedding, we also like to enjoy the other simple, lovely things in life such as delicious food! We thought it would be nice to start sharing some of our favourite recipes with you, starting with this mouth watering tart, think delicious buttery, golden shortcrust pastry, with creamy milk chocolate ganache, topped with a gooey salted caramel layer and finishing off with a grating of sharp, and bold dark chocolate layer. Sounds like something you might be interested in? Here's the recipe!

Double Chocolate Tart
Serves 10 

Ingredients:
375 grams ready made sweet shortcrust pastry ( we made our own using this recipe )
300 grams good milk chocolate ( we used green & blacks milk chocolate), chopped finely
1 tsp vanilla essence
300ml pure cream 
100 grams creme fraiche
1/4 cup raw sugar
Pinch of salt salt
50 grams bittersweet chocolate (we used green & blacks 70%)

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius. Roll out the shortcrust pastry and use it to line a 23cm greased tart tin. Cover with baking paper, fill with dried beans, or rice and bake blind for 10-15 minutes, remove baking paper and beans/rice and bake for a further 10 minutes until pastry is slightly golden. Leave to cool.
2.  Pour 100mls of cream and all the creme fraiche into a pan, and heat, stirring constantly until it just starts boiling. Remove off the heat and stir in chocolate and vanilla essence until mixture is blended.
3. Pour chocolate/cream mixture into cooled tart shell and refrigerate for an hour or more until set.
4. Pour sugar into pan on medium heat, and shake pan gently until sugar starts to melt and bubble, ( do not stir and be careful not to let the sugar burn) when sugar is darker and caramelizing, take off heat and  (get a whisk ready) pour the rest of the cream in and whisk vigurously until mixture comes together. Add a pinch of salt and pour ontop of the chocolate layer in tart shell. Leave to set in fridge for another hour. Finish off with a grating of dark chocolate on top and serve cold!

Enjoy.

x Lazybones 

For those of you who can't make it to our Bangalow shop, here's a little taste of what it looks like!
Hope you like x

Lazybones

You've probably been wondering what we've been doing lately? Or maybe not, but thought we'd fill you in anyway!
Our new range, Portrait of  a Lady has started arriving into our stores and online, we're expecting more stock in the next week so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, all our new scarves, iconic dresses and a selection of new bedding is now available online.

If you're from Bangalow way, we've recently opened our new store, next door to Island Luxe. Inspired by a ladies boudoir, our new store is full of beautiful vintage finds, antique paintings, our clothing & bedding (of course) all surrounded by amazing wallpaper which we think you will love! We'll be posting some images of this space very soon!

Don't worry, you'll still find us upstairs in Bangalow too, but we've changed things up. We've combined a selection of our stock with other stores like Tongue in Cheek vintage, Heath's Old Wares, Second Hand Rose and others to create a unique Vintage Co-Op.

Come in and say hi!

Interview with Lazybones

Back in 2000, Tracey Hocking was working at a service based company she found a tad too stressful. Dreams of sleep visited her at her desk during the day, and at night before drifting off she dreamed of making a clothing and bedding line that would make clients feel beautiful, inspired and happy. With the goal of being a fashion designer that creates reasonably priced clothing and bedding with a painterly touch and handmade feel, Tracey wanted to take her customers to a calm, serene place where they could enjoy interesting, mindful details and relax. Or as Tracey Hocking says, now: “Designs should always be flattering, colorful, and maybe even a bit mad!" Here's an interview that should answer many of your questions about Tracey, lazybones, how the brand got started, and what we're currently working on!

It's been too long since we shared all things lazybones with you.
We've been so busy getting our new range - Portrait of A Lady, ready for you!

Portrait of a lady includes a brand new range of rich, coloured knits, classic, feminine  dresses, skirts and tops,
and some fresh additions to our bedding range including velvet cushions, hand knitted blankets and  vintage inspired prints.

Here's a sneak peek of things to come...

Can you spot our Rosette quilts inside the latest issue of Country Style ?

Thanks to Stephanie Powell for featuring our bedding in the latest issue of Home Beautiful, the
shoot looks absolutely stunning and its great to see our products mix-and-match with other colours
& styles.

Our behind the scenes video for our new Summer range.

Song: Just for now by Cloud Control

The wonderful Coast Living Magazine has run a feature on Bangalow this month and we're inside!

Visit lazybones at our amazing new store opening this weekend in Brunswick Heads!

Located at:

Shop 1/8 Park Street

Brunswick Heads

NSW 2483

Full of one off vintage treasures, our lovely range of bedding, women & girls clothing all in a beautiful, feminine and quirky environment.

Come say hello!

Absolutely in love with this range by Sonia Rykiel.  What an inspiring woman!

Can anyone tell us how to achieve that hair?  We feel a fluffy hair moment coming on for our next winter range!

Thank you to everyone loving our sale!  We decided to clear the decks to make way for our best summer range ever.

We have our final shoot day next week in gorgeous Brunswick Heads.  Here is a little sneaky peek at one (of many) of our new favourites.  Due out in August in time for the opening of our new Brunswick Heads shop!  More of that later.

xx tracey

A thing for Clare Bowditch that is..

Whilst going through our old press files, we came across this gorgeous clipping of Clare in one of our dresses.

And to think that this wonderful singer has now appeared on Channel Ten's Offspring, wearing one of our dresses again!

We just can't get enough of her and her amazing music. Check it out here

x

lazybones

We're at the Brimfield Antique Show in Massachusetts at the moment, scouting out gorgeous finds to bring back to Australia.

Here are some of the beautiful things we've found so far, including an incredible jewellery box from the early 1800s!

Made out of lead and weighs a ton, it is fireproof with opulent velvet inside and hand painted detailing that still exists.....very special and also a hand stitched bag with leather trims that we just love.

We're also finding so many lovely floral paintings, its all too good!

Hope you enjoy a little snippet of what we love!

x lazybones

Our Lazybones competition is now over, thanks to all the people who entered, we always love seeing our products on you!

Congratulations to Beck Pereira (featured above) for your lovely entries!!!!

Keep an eye on our facebook page : facebook.com/lazybonesaustralia for more giveaways & news.

Its almost easter and we're getting in the spirit, visit our Bangalow store to find our freshly easter inspired staircase, complete with little bunny figurines to get you in the mood.

We've been busy in our office, sending off all our new orders as well as working on our new spring/summer range.

Here's a little sneak peek of what you can expect next season:

Also, have you entered our facebook competition yet? we're giving away a lovely pair of pillowcases! Visit us here to find out how you can win!

And keep an eye out for a new little slider popping up on our homepage shortly!!

Happy Easter everyone x

Lazybones

There are some gremlins in our At Home section doing something they shouldn't.

Hopefully will be fixed soon.  You can order QK quilts though!  From under the Curtains heading.....

Am trying to do some big deep breaths now.
xx
T

BREAKING NEWS!

We are very excited to announce our move from Oxford St to William St Paddington.  We have secured a lovely terrace shop at No 34 William St and will open there on the 19th March.  Oxford St will close on the 17th March.

We are madly planning and imagining right now and can't wait to create another beautiful store.

We hope to see you there.

Some of my inspiration pics below.  Including this gorgeous wallpaper by Graham and Brown which will appear somewhere in the new shop.  Am loving geometric patterns right now.

Some new stock arrives into the warehouse tomorrow.  VERY exciting for us to finally have it arrive. More lovely things due to arrive over the next three weeks, so keep an eye out.

Here is a pic of the beautiful wintergarden fabric in our ever popular Alice dress style

The cardis will be here in two or three weeks. They come in four colours, hydrangea (shown above), moss green, charcoal and oatmeal. 

Hope you love them as much as we do.

xx T

Finally, I have a moment to think about the blog again.  Apologies for a long hiatus.  So many things going on here in lazyland.  You may have noticed our new look!

Our new winter stock is coming in shifts over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for our new knits.  Almost cannot contain myself with excitement over these....FINALLY knitwear!  I am a firm believer that a girl can never have too many cardigans.  So keep an eye out for our lovely cotton cardis and wraps which should be in store in early March.

New bedding arrives into the warehouse tomorrow, so keep an eye on that too. You may notice we have changed our SLEEP label to RELAX as we think the boundaries between sleepwear and daywear have pretty much been permanently blurred, so decided to focus on a range for doing what we love best.....relaxing.  Designed to wear on those lovely long weekends with friends and families or after you get home from work, or the kids are in bed, or whenever you want to relaaaaaxxx.

I hope you like our new front page mini blog of photos and interviews too.  Each month we will feature a new fabulous individual where we get a change to be a complete stickybeak and ask all sorts of questions.  Please feel free to send in any questions you might have too or any ideas for people or topics you would like covered in our little mini blog.

Leaving you with a couple of my favourite shots from our last shoot by SMCH  (Stephen my clever husband)

xx t

Seoul would have to be an almost undiscovered gem of a place to visit.  Well, not undiscovered at all of course, but not really on the tourist trail.  If you ever get a chance to go, please do.  It is wonderful.

We stayed near Insa-dong, a very long street full of delicious restaurants, antique shops, shops full of a variety of paint brushes of all sizes and types as well as ream upon ream of hand made paper.  I was in heaven.  Plus many street vendors selling a bewildering array of foods as well as gorgeous cheap scarves, hats and gloves.  Even though it got to around 5 below zero we still had to wander around looking at everything and sampling as much local food as possible.

There are many side alleys full of restaurants, so we decided that was going to be our best way of finding the unexpected.  That did happen one lunch time when we followed a small group into a tiny alley, through a door and then into a very warm and cozy restaurant.  After a great deal of unwrapping of scarves, coats, hats, gloves and getting settled into the only remaining small table, we were rather horrified to find that the restaurant specialised in spinal cords!   Spinal Cords, intestines, maybe livers or maybe something else, not sure.  Perhaps they would have tasted great, but we just couldn't manage to summon the courage to eat them.

Luckily they also had a yummy beef dish,( it was beef, we checked) which saved the day.

I love the differences in culture, foods, outlooks that are evident when we travel.  How spinal cord is a delicacy in one culture and not in another.

One thing that was definitely the same in Seoul was coffee.  Seoul has the best coffee in Asia I think.  It is such a livable, urbane,  interesting city.  Can't wait to go back again.

xx
t

We made it to Seoul today

Just wanted to excitedly say it is SNOWING outside our hotel right now and we are just about to rug up and wander through it looking for yummy bulgogi and bibimbab to eat.

Gotta fly!!!

Well, this is the last day of (my) working year and it is going to be a doozy.......

Big deliveries still arriving of stock, new samples (exciting!), huge rolls of surplus fabric from L.A. and boxes of flea market goodies finally coming off their long sea journey.  Seems absurd for a last day.

Most exciting are our new Memento collection bedding samples.  Hoping hoping they are good. 

I wanted to thank all of our absolutely wonderful, creative, interesting, amazing customers for their huge support this year.  It has been a bumper year for us and I thank you for all the kind words and funny stories that have flowed in.

As of tomorrow, I am on HOLIDAY!!!  and off for a couple of weeks trekking around Japan and Seoul in South Korea.  An interesting time to visit, to say the least.

So, lovely customers and friends, please have a safe, happy, relaxing, enriching holiday season.

And I leave you with a couple of pics of our latest shoot this week for our winter Too range.

xxx
t

We have started to shoot the new season catalogue which is always great fun, really stressful, wildly interesting, lots of hard work and did I mention a bit stressful?

Here is a sneak peek at one of our new knitted cotton cardigans.  It is our lovely Coco wrap but in a long sleeve cardi in oatmeal marle.    Yes, finally we have a small range of knits that we are madly in love with.  Will be available for sale late Feb early March.

oh and one more.  This one is our new Eliza wrap which has pockets and has a lovely random array of different knitting stitches. This comes in charcoal, oatmeal, hydrangea blue, and mossy green.   The Coco comes in the hydrangea and moss too.

We shoot in our fabulous big photography studio on our property.  You might notice the join line in the backdrop wall will miraculously disappear when this shot finally appears on the website........

I love our new model, Kate. 

xx, T

And a Z that makes me happy........

Just had to post a picture of this gorgeous book I bought on ebay.

AND I can't wait to get it to see what is inside.

Happy Monday everyone, just letting you know that we are now on facebook, drop by and say hello here!

Hope you are having a wonderful start to the week. x

I always wish I could somehow embed music into each dress or quilt etc.  I love listening to music and often think of the saying

"all art aspires to the condition of music"
So, here is one of my favourites.....will keep adding them in

this is so much fun!

I love Coco Rosie too......

I haven't kept up with this but am rectifying it right now.  Stephen has just shown us the above clip which is just SO amazing.

I love this woman and wish I was her for a little while.....
But am a bit scared of heights, so might have to get over that first.

Her name is Catherine Destivelle and is my new hero.

xx
t

ps.  am so excited that I have worked out how to put clips on the blog.  Now for some music......

Also we have just finished mapping out our new winter range.   All we need now is to see the final samples.  HOORAY

It is such a great time in the design process.  The ideas are still fresh and the samples are still magnificent in our minds. We havent had to adjust our expectations yet (that is also called a reality check) The samples that have already arrived are great and we do our first shoot next Monday......

So, summer is kind of over for us in the design part of lazybones.  We are now trying to remember how it feels to be cold and snuggled up by a fire.  Even while the cicadas are throbbing outside our window and we need to wipe the perspiration from our eyes.

One of my inspiration shots for the new season below

LOTS of colour

We love to listen to Clare Bowditch's music in our head office and in our shops.  She is SO gorgeous, funny, talented, witty, clever etc etc.  AND she loves wearing our frocks.  So that just proves it, right?

She is in the middle of doing some concerts at the Opera House singing the songs of Tim and Neil Finn with some other impressive individuals.   Wish I was in Sydney........

We went to her concert in Bangalow not that long ago and loved it so much.  I didn't realise how funny she was and almost had to lie on the ground so I could just give myself over to laughing without the constraints of gravity.   But pulled myself together and sat there like a jelly just let out of it's mould, shaking with laughter.

So go if you can and see and hear her sometime.

A pic below that S took at the Bangalow show

Clare played with Lanie Lane who is also amazing.   They really sounded beautiful together.

.

Another week gone by in a flash.
I am quite shocked that suddenly it is Saturday again.  What happened to the middle of the week I wonder?

Summer is almost here in our beautiful part of the world too.  The air is heavy with the scent of jasmine and orange blossoms.

These last couple of weeks have brought the cycles of life and the changing of seasons so much to mind.
My wonderful Dad turned 80.  He is an amazingly lovely person and I am so proud of him reaching this milestone.

And the sad passing of an old friend Sarah Watt who died last week.  I hadn't seen Sarah for many years but am so touched by her wonderfully creative and full life and am sad that she has gone.  Sarah and I did stand up comedy together many years ago and made each other laugh endlessly.  Anyone who knows me now will gasp at the idea that I ever did standup, but there you go.....ya never know.   So goodbye Sarah and congratulations Dad.

and so it goes

Finally able to have a few moments to add a post.

Has been a very busy week (as usual I guess)

Our new US blog is now live, although some stock is still winging it's way over to L.A. to our lovely warehouse people there.
Should all be there by mid to late week, so hopefully all will work smoothly!   Smooth sailing happens about 30% of the time I reckon, but I am forever the optimist.

I wanted to post a few of the vintage luggage tags that I am obsessed with as an inspiration for the weekend.

I find them delightful and inspirational.   Such wonderful use of a tiny space, and so full of whimsy.  I used them as a base for a lovely quilt a few seasons ago that I would really love to revisit and do it better this time!   We shall see.   I always have too many ideas have to spend so much time editing.......

I wonder if any of these hotels are still operating.......

Have a great weekend.

Hi All

Just wanted to let our patient customers know that more stock is coming soon.
We have a big delivery coming next week and weekly deliveries until the end of November.

Our factories are humming with activity and madly trying to keep up with demand.

Keep watching the site for LOTS of new frocks due in soon.

And for some light relief in the midst of a busy day I present the amazing flying Minnie!

Thought I would share a few pics of our lovely pooch MInnie flying for stones in the creek at the end of our garden.

She jumps  up high into the air to catch the stone or doggy treat and then does a belly flop down into the water.

It is the best thing to do at the end of the day to make all the long hours disappear.
xx

tracey

Hello all

Well, I have been trying to decide what interesting thing should be number one in my list of interesting and odd things that Stephen tells me and decided on this one as it is such a wonderful story that moved me so much at the time he told me.

We had been listening to a radio program about experimental music and were discussing how it almost required a deep understanding of music to understand or enjoy it.  This lead to thinking about how music touches us and Stephen then told me about Gavin Bryars who is an English composer and the remarkable and totally moving piece of music he put together called Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet.   It goes for ten minutes and Stephen played it for me in it's entirety.

I have copied the story of the piece of music from Gavin Bryar's website below.  You can buy the piece from Itunes which is the best, or listen to bits of it on youtube.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbczBcz78vo

It is a beautiful piece that totally captivated me.  You can hear the pathos, the sadness but also the spirit in this old man.

I hope it is interesting for you too.

Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet

"In 1971, when I lived in London, I was working with a friend, Alan Power, on a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song - sometimes bits of opera, sometimes sentimental ballads - and one, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet". This was not ultimately used in the film and I was given all the unused sections of tape, including this one.

When I played it at home, I found that his singing was in tune with my piano, and I improvised a simple accompaniment. I noticed, too, that the first section of the song - 13 bars in length - formed an effective loop which repeated in a slightly unpredictable way. I took the tape loop to Leicester, where I was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping.

I was puzzled until I realised that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man's singing. This convinced me of the emotional power of the music and of the possibilities offered by adding a simple, though gradually evolving, orchestral accompaniment that respected the tramp's nobility and simple faith. Although he died before he could hear what I had done with his singing, the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated testimony to his spirit and optimism.

The piece was originally recorded on Brian Eno's Obscure label in 1975 and a substantially revised and extended version for Point Records in 1993. The version which is played by my ensemble was specially created in 1993 to coincide with this last recording.

Gavin Bryars."

www.gavinbryars.com

WELCOME to my first blog on this new website.   I have been so looking forward  to this part of the new website.  After all the days and days of decisions and data entry, it is wonderful to finally get to the fun bit.

I have this image (below) that we shot for our Spring/Summer sleepwear range on my desk and aspire to that level of relaxation.
Of course, I am very far from this most of the time but dreaming of how things might be is so good for us, that I hope to offer a little slice of that kind of dreaming on this site. 

I am very lucky to be married to a wonderful chap who just happens also to be a great photographer and we love to create these images together.   We try to capture a particular feeling or sense with each one.   I guess like most creative people, we always think the best ones are yet to come.  

I plan to have a weekly behind the scenes expose showing how we work on campaigns and shoots and the general day to day of running this type of crazy business.  Plus some of the exceptional people who work with me here at lazybones.

Also a weekly post called something like The Odd Things My Husband Tells Me.  My husband, Stephen has a wide ranging curiosity and passion for all that is odd and  fascinating and always inspires and amuses me with these often unexpected snippets.   It struck me that this may be of interest to you, so I am madly scribbling notes at all hours so I don't forget anything.

I wanted to share some of our lazybones world with you, our lovely customers.  This is our 11th year of operation and I feel very blessed to be still here and still full of ideas and plans.

So, onwards................

xxx

tracey